Sor's Guitar Music—A Fresh Start

Abstract

This article addresses the considerations and decisions that underlie a new critical edition of Sor’s guitar music that is being prepared by the author. Sor’s oeuvre for guitar survives almost exclusively in early printed editions, not autograph manuscripts, so such a task begins with a reassessment, based on historical and text-critical criteria, of which editions he was likely to have been involved in himself and which we can therefore trust the most. As a result, this new edition partly uses different original sources as models than other modern editions. Meissonnier’s later versions of opp. 1–23 from 1826, claimed to be “corrected and fingered by the composer”, have generally been chosen and even prioritized over the editions Sor issued 1816–1822 while he was in London. The early Castro editions have been repudiated as unauthentic. The article also discusses Sor’s seemingly peculiar attitude towards errors in the printed scores as well as his notation of ornaments and some other symbols that have puzzled scholars and editors.